That sent me on a scavenger hunt into corners of my house looking for anything that might contain a PCB to see what components I might find to salvage. Just a bit ago, I found a multi channel amplifier, a NAD 906, and it's just loaded with stuff in triplicate. It doesn't power on. I swear I never saw it before, either, and I haven't an idea where it came from. Several in working order have sold on eBay for around $100 in the last month. I may see if I can figure out what's wrong with some on-line tutorial help, but if not, I'll have loads of fodder to practice un-soldering components.

In the process of snugging the components down close to surface of my project board, I broke the wires of a 10uF Capacitor at the level of the solder. Now, I had a mess; how to remove the solder, and how to get the broken wire out of the hole. As it happens, I have 8" stainless steel double pointed knitting needles in all sorts of sizes from .7mm to 5mm. These holes are tiny, so I pulled one of the .7mm needles, heated it along with the solder until I could push the needle through the hole. After a couple of seconds, I pulled the needle back out of the hole, and on the back side, a small straw of solder remained. That easily knocked off, and revealed an open hole. Because there was an identical capacitor right next to that one, I knew how to align this one to keep polarity. It didn't explode when I connected it to the power source, and turned on the switch, and the motor turned as always.

Back to the amp; there are 3 aluminum angle irons about 1.5" x 1.25" x 12", and each of these is screwed to heat sinks about 1.75" x 3" x 9". To each of those angle irons are screwed many of what looks like 5V. Regulators. Everything inside is extremely dusty, and covered with lint, pet hair, and I don't know what else. When it's light tomorrow, it's going to get a good hard gust of wind from the air compressor.